The Economy, the War in Iraq and the 2004 Presidential Election

Douglas A. Hibbs ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this paper I apply the Bread and Peace model of voting in US presidential elections to analyze the sources of George W. Bush’s narrow re-election victory in 2004. The aggregate election outcome is readily explained by the model’s objectively measured political-economic fundamentals – no appeal need be made to arbitrary count, trend, dummy and switching variables. The results imply that the 2004 election turned mainly on weighted-average growth of per capita real disposable personal income over the term. The war in Iraq, which has escalated dramatically in political relevance since the 2004 contest, had a relatively small impact on the election result, most likely depressing Bush’s two-party vote share by less than a half percentage point.

Keywords: 2004 US presidential election; voting and economy; Iraq and 2004 US election; bread and peace voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 Z00 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written
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